When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Dang, these seats are delicate! I’m always very careful with my side bolsters, but last week I needed to quickly retrieve something from my car and leaned in across the front seat and must have turned my jeans into sandpaper- resulting in the need to have it touched up. Rather than take it to a specialist, was hoping to have a go at it myself since it’s fairly minor.
Checking out the Leatherique site, I see that they have stock Porsche colors, but nothing called “Bordeaux”, but “Red” seems to match based on what I see on
the screen. There is a numeric code associated with their color, however I can’t find any such numeric code in my build sheet or anywhere else, that I can see. Anyone have experience with this or can confirm if Bordeaux is the same as “Red”?
They have offered to accept a sample from me to ensure a match, however I don’t really know how to provide one without slicing a piece of my leather off :/
The leather repair guy here in Austin is surprisingly affordable, maybe most are? I would take it straight to one of them after researching some reviews. I would advise against trying a DIY since you could possibly make it worse harder to properly repair (like I did on a leather chair in our house).
I recently had the guy here do a complete refurbishing of all the leather on my 5 year-old King Ranch pickup with a lot more spots just as bad as that and some worse. He got the leather at least 95% of the way back to its new look. The price was more than fair.
Dealers usually have a "fit it" guy to make leather blemishes go away.
Give them a call.
I had a small tear/scuff repaired on our passenger seat last week. I used the dealerships mobile go-to-guy.
Pretty slick. He sanded the area, used some filler glue, then mixed up some paint to match and used a mini compressor with a sprayer. Viola!! $80 well spent.
Thanks Lex. The rest of you guys are freaking me out lol.- how hard can it be?
If buying the stuff costs almost as much as having it done at my dealer then I may go the pro route- they fixed some scuffs that were there when I purchased the car and they are undetectable- the biggest concern is the hassle it is to take a car in for service in these parts. It takes hours out of my life to get there, pick up, etc, etc.
Thanks Lex. The rest of you guys are freaking me out lol.- how hard can it be?
If buying the stuff costs almost as much as having it done at my dealer then I may go the pro route- they fixed some scuffs that were there when I purchased the car and they are undetectable- the biggest concern is the hassle it is to take a car in for service in these parts. It takes hours out of my life to get there, pick up, etc, etc.
The guy who did mine was mobile. He came to the house and did it in the driveway.
I agree that a custom color match may be needed for an ideal match since leathers and dye lots of leathers seem to vary, especially for non-black colors. The leather guy I used showed me how he custom-tweaks the color for each repair job at the shop himself to get the hue just right... which is of course harder when repairing a spot as opposed to dying a whole new piece.
I imagine Porsche has better controls for this, but I can tell you that each of the King Ranch pickups I looked at while shopping those had noticeable differences. They had the match of all of the surfaces in each truck done well, but between trucks the amount of variation between the "same" color was a bit surprising.
No, you don't need to do that. I'm in the leather furniture business and do that kind of touch-up almost every single day for the past twenty years. It's not hard, its not expensive and doesn't take a special skill set. All you have to do is go to your local craft store and buy some small bottles of water-based acrylic paint. Get a red and a black, satin sheen preferable and some cheap brushes. Buy the smallest bottles you can get, you don't need much.. Get home and grab a piece of white paper and put some red on it, and a little black. Now start mixing - just like a real artist does until you get a shade you think looks good. Test it on the bottom rear of the seat - keep mixing adding a little more red or a little more black until you get it where you want. Its water-based so you can wipe it off after each try. When you get the shade right, paint away. Porsches have painted leather interiors, not aniline ones so you are doing what is already on there from the factory. When you get the paint on the rub where you want it, let it dry and them come in with a little leather conditioner and blend that in over the top, it will shade it (not to much rubbing or your paint will come off). That's a pro repair short of getting the airbrush out. Going to cost you about $ 5.
For example, here's a leather color I have in my store called Angelo Putty. I just get these two bottles of paint and make my own shade, then stick it in a smaller bottle for future use. I have about two dozen of these kind of things made up ready to go for the delivery truck teams when they mark a piece of leather. It's not complicated.
I imagine Porsche has better controls for this, but I can tell you that each of the King Ranch pickups I looked at while shopping those had noticeable differences. They had the match of all of the surfaces in each truck done well, but between trucks the amount of variation between the "same" color was a bit surprising.
When Ford did the King Ranch series, they decided to use a pure aniline hide in the truck, that is almost never done because pure anilines fade from UV exposure. Also, they are vegetable-dyed hides, not topcoated. So yes, you will see a huge variance due to those two factors that will increase over time as sunlight will fade certain areas quicker. Aniline hides will also soil easier and pick up spots from stains. A vehicle interior is a pretty harsh climate for a pure aniline leather.
Every other car maker that I know of uses either finished leather or semi-aniline, both are topcoated with pigments (basically painted). There is nothing special about Porsche leather, its actually pretty cheap leather as hides go.